ResilienX has carved a niche in the aviation industry with its innovative approach to monitoring and managing the health and safety of complex ecosystems, a critical aspect of future air traffic management systems.
CEO and Co-Founder of ResilienX, Andrew Carter shared the story of how the company has grown alongside the demands of the user with DroneTalks CEO, Eszter Kovács, as well as sharing insights on projects and collaborations with the likes of NASA.
How ResilienX has evolved as a company based on industry needs
Many of ResilienX’s leadership team got into the drone space by developing the U.S. Army’s ground-based sense-and-avoid system, while at a past organisation. When moving over to the commercial space, they realised 25% of the system built for the Army was focused on monitoring system health, integrity, and performance of the overall ecosystem and mitigating any issues detected - none of which existed on the commercial side.
“We couldn't even get people to build it for us, we were trying to pay them, so that was really what ResilienX was stood up to do” Andrew explained.
This realisation led to the development of the first commercially available In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS), a concept established by NASA in 2019 who ResilienX have worked closely with since.
Bridging gaps with Model-Based Systems Engineering
Andrew noted that after developing these systems, they realised the industry hadn’t evolved at the rate they had hoped for, leading potential customers to explain that they wanted the ResilienX software, but first needed to build an ecosystem and didn’t know how.
It was this gap in the market that led ResilienX to begin offering model-based systems engineering (MBSE) as a service. This approach involves detailed modelling of beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) ecosystems, defining functional and performance requirements, and integrating various technologies to create a cohesive and robust infrastructure for clients.
ResilienX’s collaboration with NASA and the U.S. Air Force
After developing the MBSE as a service, Andrew notes how the U.S. Air Force approached ResilienX looking for not only the system or the software, but an entire digital infrastructure, or what ResilienX now refer to as the Digital Operation Center.
Funded by the Air Force and NASA, ResilienX developed an advanced air mobility digital operations center called AAM OptiXTM, which can be integrated with various systems and data feeds to support a wide range of use cases and applications across the UAS and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) landscape.
“We think of this as a system of systems, or a consortium approach,” Andrew commented, with OptiX using best-of-breed products in UAS traffic management, data fusion to form a common air picture, common weather picture and weather intelligence, cyber security monitoring, and ResilienX’s safety assurance pieces and bind those 5 technology pillars with the safety case and human factors.
“It involves the entire safety case aspects of identifying risks - failure hazard assessment, failure modes and effects analysis, and other FAA-encouraged safety-related requirements and activities. Putting all of that together around the technology pieces that we picked, developed and integrated enables us to actually have a repeatable safety case for any client who is using this tech stack.”
ResilienX also integrated human factors in a way that the team believes has never really been considered by the industry. By studying user needs, workload analysis, and display heuristics, ResilienX has worked to ensure its systems are not only technologically capable but also user-friendly and adaptable to the various operational requirements for different use cases.
Having all of this in a ready-to-go bundle cuts confusion for customers who prior to this would have to individually purchase/build, integrate and test these components.
Speaking on this, Andrew said “In the past, everybody had to go out and piece part these different system function and then have to pay all the non-recurring engineering fees for integration and testing… you don’t have to figure out what systems to buy or what's real or not - it cuts through the smoke and mirrors.”
The AAM OptiX consortium includes OneSky, TruWeather Solutions, Sunhillo, Assured Information Security, Anzen Unmanned, and HF Designworks.
Success stories: ResilienX’s capabilities in action
Speaking on recent successful projects at ResilienX, Andrew commented on their work with NUAIR: “NUAIR is now located at the Syracuse airport and is the only airport in the country that has military drones that fly out next to commercial traffic”.
ResilienX’s digital infrastructure underpins NUAIR’s 240-square-mile BVLOS operational area, facilitating the integration of various systems and proving the operational viability of its technology in a real-world environment. These BVLOS operations from Syracuse are said to increase the commercial BVLOS area in New York by more than 3x or 300%.
NUAIR received approval from the FAA via a Part 107 waiver enabling remote, autonomous BVLOS operations in the airspace of upstate New York. On achieving the waiver, Andrew added: “The underpinning of a lot of that waiver and the BVLOS area is our system, the digital infrastructure integrated with the physical infrastructure NUAIR has deployed across Central New York”
Andrew also noted the close collaboration with the FAA, as another project collaboration has recently concluded. This project resulted in identifying ten failure modes in UTM ecosystems, developing requirements for monitoring and mitigating these failure modes, and the standard operating procedures that go along with these requirements. ResilienX plans to open-source and share the results of this project industry-wide in the near future.
Speaking on the project, Andrew commented: “The idea was to quantify the value of having the ability to mitigate. We looked at what happens if you didn't have the ability to figure out there was a problem versus having the ability monitor and detect an issue and then mitigate it as opposed to if you just let it go on unmitigated. What is the quantification of safety or other KPIs that you can come up with?”
The team is currently working on the report to share the results with the industry.
A glance at the future of the UAS and aviation industry within the US
Looking to the future of the industry, Andrew noted how the US is taking note of how scaling happens in cities like Dallas, collecting data and assessing from there. Dallas made history this year within US Aviation, for becoming the first area in the US to have FAA authorisation for multiple commercial drone operations in the same airspace.
“I think once the FAA is happy with Dallas and gets what they need, what you’re going to see is all of those operators in the US mode C veil go as absolutely fast as they can. So I think it’s going to be the first time you actually see real scale.”
